I am working to make sure we don't only protect the environment, we also improve governance.

It gradually became clear that the Green Belt Movement's work with communities to repair the degraded environment could not be done effectively without participants embracing a set of core spiritual values.

Sometimes we become bound by other people's thoughts because we are not sure about ourselves.

And so I'm saying that, yes, colonialism was terrible, and I describe it as a legacy of wars, but we ought to be moving away from that by now.

We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible.

When I went back home, I was constantly being reminded, I'm an African woman, and so there are certain things I shouldn't do, certain ambitions that I should not entertain. That was a problem for me because I had never thought of myself as an African woman, never thought of myself as a woman to begin with. For me the limit was my capacity, my capability.

That's the way I do things when I want to celebrate, I always plant a tree.